The inventions described herein relate to systems and methods for increasing the safety of aerial vehicles. In certain configurations, current aerial vehicles can be operated in a manner that trades kinetic energy for potential energy or potential energy for kinetic energy, in order to recover from an unsafe situation or attitude. In one typical scenario, altitude can be traded for airspeed, in order to recover from an emergency that occurs in a slow flight or a stalled configuration.
However, certain states of an aerial vehicle, where the total energy (e.g., kinetic and potential energies) available is below a threshold, can produce scenarios where flight recovery is impossible without damage to the aerial vehicle or to its occupants in the event of an emergency. An example of this is the “dead man's curve” for rotorcraft, where emergencies in low airspeed and low altitude configurations produce an unrecoverable aerial vehicle state.
As such, there is a need in the field of aerial vehicles for a new and useful safety system. The inventions described herein create such a new and useful safety system and method.